datsci_est_2015 a day ago

Did the US? I would argue it’s been going on for 80 years, in tandem with the rise of the military industrial complex. Go back much further than that, though, and the argument starts leaking into whether the US was ever great to begin with (assuming “great” = “empire”, loosely).

But the US was never really an empire in the traditional sense, no? More of a cultural hegemon / terrorist petrostate.

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ceejayoz a day ago | parent [-]

> Did the US? I would argue it’s been going on for 80 years, in tandem with the rise of the military industrial complex.

That's pretty fast, historically.

> But the US was never really an empire in the traditional sense, no?

Sure it was/is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_imperialism

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datsci_est_2015 a day ago | parent [-]

Not to get weighed down in pedantry, but the Wikipedia article is “American imperialism”, not “the American empire”. Taking imperialist actions is a low bar for determining what is or what is not an empire. I wouldn’t call Yugoslavia an empire, as an example. Even the USSR is tough to call an empire, for some reason. Maybe because it collapsed so quickly.

Now that I peruse a bit, I guess scholars use the term “imperial power” to get away from the colloquial baggage of the term “empire”.

	▲	dagenleg 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		How is USSR, a direct continuation of the Russian Empire, not an empire?